Philippines floating guardhouse - 101

As the second phase of my project with the fisherfolks, we have constructed a guardhouse for members to take turns sleeping out on the water keeping watch over the seaweed and eventual fish cages. (Slight problem with theft here) We finished the seaweed farm two weeks ago, and since then, have been building the floating guardhouse. The seaweed project was pretty straight forward, just cut up pieces, keep it in salt water, and tie it to nylon lines with buoys on the ends, easy enough. However, I've never built a guardhouse before, much less anything floating, or made of bamboo and barrels. For technical expertise in building such things, we called on two of our members who consider themselves carpenters and told them to go to it. I went to Tacloban with the association president and bought 20 big blue drums, and we got a shipment of 40-foot long bamboo poles from Samar Island for the main chassis of the structure. (All of these purchases were long, drawn-out ordeals, usually ending with me saying, 'Okay, well maybe we should just wait until I'm gone in October to get the stuff.') When I left town a week and a half ago, the men had the corner barrels tied to bamboo with thick 300-pound test fishing line. When I got back on Monday, the guard house was floating, all of the Bamboo tied down, and a central roofed-structure built in the center of the platform with round timbers, since they're cheaper than actual legitimate lumber. I was really pleased with the structure, especially since I had no idea what to expect when I left the week before, the men all randomly tying bamboo poles together. The only real structural defect with the guardhouse is that the heavier middle area where the little shack is so heavy with lumber that it bows the entire platform inward, so we asked for 6 drums from my supervisor, and hoisted the structure up, with an extra barrels holding the center up. All of the work is done with ropes, machetes, 1 saw, and a kilo of nails, along with nylon, bamboo, and drums. After adding the supporting blue drums to the center of the structure, we went to the market and found a man who makes shingles out of the local mangroves of Nipa trees and bought 200 shingles to cover the roof. Since no one has a truck or car, we carried everything by a pedicab bicycle which took a few trips. After another day of work, we had the roof done, the nipa shingles tied with Uway, a native cord made from tiny slivers of mangrove wood. Finally, I went back to the market and bought 4 pieces of plywood yesterday. We laid down the rest of our round timber on the floor as a foundation for the half-inch marine plywood, and then the guys got to work, tying the floor down with remaining nylon. I don't know why they didn't just nail it, but I'm sure there's a good reason, they seem to know what they're doing. We finished the structure off with a metal roof cap of bent galvanized steel. There still are some major ideological issues with the guardhouse, like the fact that it's sitting right over a coral reef, something I have mentioned time and time again, how they are killing the polyps and their symbiotic algae, but, unfazed, the men nod their heads and smile, and say they will move it, just not today. I simmer down, knowing I better quit while I'm ahead, and leave some of the world's problems for tomorrow.